The Biosphere and Man - E O Wilson

THE BIOSPHERE AND MAN - by EDWARD O. WILSON, Professor Emeritus of Biology and Zoology at Harvard University.

Delivered to the Kistler Prize Ceremony, Foundation for the Future, Seattle, Washington, August 15, 2000

" Thank you so much. Mr. Kistler, Mr. Citron, Mr. Velamoor, other staff members of the Foundation For the Future, fellow symposiasts, guests, friends, colleagues, I was, of course, delighted, indeed overwhelmed to learn of this special recognition, to be the first Kistler Prize winner. I am very grateful to the Prize Committee for recommending me, and to Walter Kistler for his dream of creating the Foundation For the Future. I find it daunting to be in the spotlight in a group of scholars of this caliber, whose combined subject is nothing less than everything, for all time, into the past and future, and everywhere in space. For that reach of mind is, after all, the human destiny, is it not? The complete expression of the human spirit is to search and grasp, to admit no intrinsic boundary to the mind. If we fail to make that effort, if we fail to speak the truth as we see it, as a great many critics have said we should, then Homo sapiens would cheat its potential and very much so at its own risk.

We are innately inclined, I think, to ignore much of the kind of information that is under consideration here and has been touched on in these introductions. The Foundation For the Future takes recognition of the following fundamental flaw of human nature: that each person is mentally boxed into a very small time/space capsule and, by instinct, most people like it that way. When you put all the mental space/time capsules together, you create a vastly larger space, especially in the techno scientific culture. But in our emotional and intellectual awareness, day in and day out, and for most of our lives, the vast majority remain confined - dangerously confined - to only a minute fraction of the space/time capsule that is communally available to us all.

That is what I would touch on in the following ten to fifteen minutes ...."